Whole Foods Value Matters: Can New Marketing Campaign Win Back Customers?

Reclaim­ing brand, and the val­ue propo­si­tion of organ­ic pro­duce.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Once syn­ony­mous with being healthy and whole­some, the Whole Foods brand has become inad­ver­tent­ly embroiled with a per­cep­tion of being expen­sive (seem­ing­ly unable to shake off the “whole pay­check” nick­name), and per­haps even more detri­men­tal to the brand, have devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for “quack­ery” or pseu­do­science around healthy eat­ing – per­ceived snake-oil sales­men for so-called super-foods and pricey pro­bi­otics. The com­pa­ny’s new brand­ing ini­tia­tive looks to reclaim its iden­ti­ty.


Whole Foods has been strug­gling with a brand­ing prob­lem for the past few years. With­out a doubt, it has been a dif­fi­cult few years for the retail­er.

The effect of the reces­sion on con­sumer food bud­gets, com­bined with the fact that com­peti­tors such as Wal­mart have been grad­u­al­ly increas­ing their organ­ic and eth­i­cal food offer­ings, has con­tributed to the brand’s trou­bled growth. Their stock lost more than 43 per­cent of its val­ue in one year, declin­ing from a high of $65.24 per share in Octo­ber 2013 to just $39.94 per share for the same 2014 trad­ing week.

A Problem of Perception

The issue for Whole Foods: the com­pa­ny has­n’t been in com­mand of neg­a­tive influ­ences that impact their brand. While all brands suf­fer from con­flict­ing mes­sages to an extent, Whole Foods has­n’t coun­ter­act­ed these with a uni­fied mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that affirms their val­ue propo­si­tion.

For this rea­son, Whole Foods has announced their inten­tion to deliv­er a nation­al brand­ing cam­paign to restore cus­tomer faith in the com­pa­ny’s core brand val­ues, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regard to qual­i­ty and ethics.

Led by a series of dig­i­tal video spots under the col­lec­tive moniker “Val­ue Mat­ters,” the con­tent pro­motes qual­i­ty, and eth­i­cal farm­ing as two of the key val­ues of the brand.

It rep­re­sents a seri­ous com­mit­ment to brand­ing from the gro­cery retail­er. The New York Times reports that the bud­get is esti­mat­ed to be between $15 mil­lion and $20 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing up to four times the brands mar­ket­ing bud­get in pre­vi­ous years.

Jean­nine D’Ad­dario, Whole Foods glob­al vice pres­i­dent of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, said of the cam­paign:

Not every­one knows what makes Whole Foods dif­fer­ent from oth­er gro­cers. This cam­paign will dis­tin­guish what makes our brand spe­cial, our food dif­fer­ent, and our qual­i­ty supe­ri­or.”

It’s a short­fall that has per­haps been caused by a lack of rein­force­ment of the brand’s iden­ti­ty. Pre­vi­ous years’ mar­ket­ing efforts were pri­mar­i­ly focused on local and region­al mar­kets, and often took a posi­tion that could be seen to be fight­ing against the cur­rent. For exam­ple, in many cas­es cam­paigns pro­mot­ed prod­ucts such as the 365 Every­day Val­ue line of prod­ucts espous­ing low prices. Arguably this has nev­er real­ly been a sig­nif­i­cant part of Whole Foods’ val­ue propo­si­tion.

Value Matters (More Than Price)

Val­ue Mat­ters’ direct­ly address­es the major con­cerns that have afflict­ed the Whole Foods’ brand. Essen­tial­ly, the neg­a­tive mes­sag­ing sum­ma­rized by “whole pay­check” under­mines the Whole Foods val­ue propo­si­tion, how­ev­er as this cam­paign right­ly puts forth, val­ue isn’t linked sole­ly to low price.

From a copy­writ­ing per­spec­tive, it’s cer­tain­ly a neat turn of phras­ing, sin­gle­hand­ed­ly rebuff­ing a per­cep­tion for being over­priced, and rein­forc­ing the brand’s healthy image and rep­u­ta­tion for qual­i­ty pro­duce. In a sense it reclaims the brand’s mar­ket­ing iden­ti­ty — a mes­sage that ulti­mate­ly it’s qual­i­ty and val­ue that mat­ters, and it’s worth pay­ing a lit­tle more for.

It remains to be seen whether the nation­al brand­ing ini­tia­tive will win back sen­ti­ment among con­sumers. How­ev­er, the direct­ness and intent of the brand’s mes­sag­ing is cer­tain­ly there.

As John Mack­ey, Co-CEO of Whole Foods Mar­ket explained to investors ear­li­er in July:

We’re try­ing to adver­tise who we are. We’re try­ing to change what we think is a neg­a­tive nar­ra­tive about our com­pa­ny. What remains to be seen is whether that will be enough to win frus­trat­ed and dis­il­lu­sioned cus­tomers over again.”

Inter­est­ing­ly, the cam­paign then seems to be posi­tioned not to win new mar­ket share, but to win back that which has recent­ly been lost. Will this exten­sive exer­cise in brand­ing make the nec­es­sary dif­fer­ence for con­sumers to return to Whole Food stores?


Do you think Whole Foods’ rebrand­ing will change neg­a­tive sen­ti­ment among con­sumers? Leave your thoughts in the com­ments.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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